Nanoscale Research Letters (Oct 2019)

Two-Dimensional Hole-Array Grating-Coupling-Based Excitation of Bloch Surface Waves for Highly Sensitive Biosensing

  • Daohan Ge,
  • Jianpei Shi,
  • Ahmed Rezk,
  • Chao Ma,
  • Liqiang Zhang,
  • Ping Yang,
  • Shining Zhu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s11671-019-3159-8
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Abstract In this study, a surface diffraction two-dimensional (2D) grating structure was placed on the topmost layer of distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) for biosensing. Bloch surface wave (BSW) resonance was realized by coupling a 2D subwavelength hole-array grating and could be excited at different locations: the surface of 2D-grating layer or the inter-face between the DBR and bio-solution. Material losses in the multilayer dielectric were measured to test the robustness of this scheme. Both the surface diffraction-grating BSW (DG-BSW) and the alternative guided grating-coupled BSW (GC-BSW) configuration showed markedly enhanced angular sensitivity compared to conventional prism-coupled schematics. Exciting these modes using a grating-coupling technique appears to yield different extreme sensitivity modes with a maximum of 1190°/RIU for DG-BSW and 2255°/RIU for GC-BSW. Refractive index sensors with a high figure of merit may be realized via such compact configurations.

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